Chapter 23 Victor
VICTOR
Three months have passed since the Hunt, and I still can’t believe where I’ve ended up.
Tonight, I’m at Theo’s place again, watching him sleep beside me, his breathing steady in the darkness.
It’s become our rhythm—up to four nights a week spent like this—and I’m caught between finding comfort in it and fearing what it means.
He sleeps on his back, one arm flung above his head, his lashes resting against his cheek so heavy they look like someone drew them on.
The first time I see him without his armor up—without the smirk at his mouth—I almost can’t reconcile it with the man who took me apart in Julian’s living room.
He looks too soft to be the same person.
He isn’t. They’re both him. I’m only just learning that.
No one knows. Not the guys at my fight club, not my business partners, not even Marco. During the day, I’m still Victor Kaine, the hard-ass who built an empire with his fists. But nights belong to this—to us.
That’s the version I tell myself.
The version Marco hands me at the start of every Monday meeting reads differently.
Hartwell from Southwest Financial signed with Dawson in the third week.
Lin let his BioMax contract lapse two months ago and didn’t reply when I asked what we’d done wrong.
Hamilton’s Sporting Goods is renegotiating scope—Marco’s word for it.
Three of my mid-tier fighters took offers that Dawson laid on their table since he came to town.
We’ve replaced two. The third, we’ll lose.
The blog pieces have stopped naming names, but they don’t need to anymore. Old guard. Slow to adapt. Distracted, even, some of them. That last one was a guess on the writer’s part.
A guess that landed.
I tell Marco we’ll claw it back. I tell him there’s no plan that doesn’t account for it. Then I drive to Theo’s after the gym closes, and from the moment his door shuts behind me, none of it exists.
We’ve established a rotation without ever discussing it.
Sometimes Theo comes to my apartment, slipping in after midnight, leaving before dawn.
Other nights, like tonight, I find myself at his place in the arts district, surrounded by his records and the smell of sandalwood.
And when we’re both too impatient, there’s his private room at Eclipse, soundproofed and secure once the club empties out.
I’ve memorized the lines of his body now, the way his breath catches when I touch him just right, the sound he makes when he’s close. I know which marks he likes me to leave and where. I know how he takes his coffee and which side of the bed he prefers.
What I don’t know is what the fuck I’m doing.
During those first few weeks after the Hunt, I told myself it was just physical—some primal need I could eventually satisfy and move past. Yet here I am, three months later, my fingers tracing the tattoo on his shoulder in the dark, feeling something dangerously close to contentment.
There’s a precariousness to it all. Our separate worlds exist just outside these doors—worlds that would collapse if they collided. So we exist in this liminal space we’ve created, a secret universe governed by its own rules, suspended in the hours between dusk and dawn.
It’s not just the sex anymore.
That’s the thought that keeps me up at night, watching Theo’s chest rise and fall beside me.
Don’t get me wrong—what we do with our bodies is unlike anything I’ve experienced.
We’ve mapped every inch of each other, learned every sensitive spot, every trigger that makes the other gasp or beg or surrender.
Our bodies speak a language that needs no translation.
But it’s what happens after—those quiet moments when we’re spent and vulnerable—that’s becoming the most dangerous part of all this.
Last night, lying in the tangle of his sheets, I found myself telling Theo about the day my knee gave out during the championship fight.
How I felt the pop, knew instantly my career was over even as I tried to stand.
I told him about the months of depression that followed, the dark place I sank into before the idea for the gym surfaced.
I told him about Marco—how Marco had been at the hospital that night, three in the morning in a chair beside the bed, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. How he came back the next day. And the day after.
“I had forty thousand in savings and a contact who knew about the warehouse space,” I admitted, surprised at how easily the words came. “Everyone said I was crazy to sink everything into it. But I needed something to rebuild myself around.”
Theo just listened, fingers tracing patterns on my chest, eyes intent on mine. No judgment, no platitudes.
Then he told me about the foster home where a caseworker first noticed him obsessively remixing songs on a beat-up laptop. How music became the one constant as he bounced between placements.
“I’d sample anything—kitchen sounds, street noise, snippets of conversation,” he said, voice soft in the darkness. “Created worlds I could control when everything else was chaos.”
I found myself wanting to go back in time, to find that skinny kid and tell him it would be okay. The intensity of that feeling terrified me.
This thing between us is evolving into something I don’t have a name for. Something I can’t categorize or control.
And that scares the shit out of me.
Theo stirs beside me, his eyes fluttering open. In the dim light filtering through his bedroom window, I can see the ghost of a smile form on his lips when he registers my presence.
“Can’t sleep?” he murmurs, voice thick with drowsiness.
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby.” He rolls toward me, running a finger along my collarbone. “Want a distraction?”
Before I can answer, he’s sliding on top of me, straddling my hips. The weight of him feels familiar now. I lift my hands to grip his thighs, thumbs tracing the intricate tattoo that curls around his hip.
“You know exactly where that leads,” I warn, feeling myself hardening beneath him.
Theo grins, the wicked smile I’ve come to crave. “Oh, I’m counting on it, Daddy.”
The name still hits the same way, but now it comes with something else—a warmth that wasn’t there before. He leans down, brushing his lips against mine in a tease before pulling back.
“Remember the first time?” he whispers.
“Which first time?”
“When you couldn’t decide if you wanted to punch me or fuck me in Julian’s living room.”
I flip him suddenly, pinning him beneath me, enjoying his surprised gasp. “Still can’t sometimes.”
Theo laughs, wrapping his legs around my waist with practiced ease. “Liar. You’re obsessed with me.”
“Shut up,” I growl, but there’s no heat behind it.
His hands find my face, thumbs stroking my stubble with surprising tenderness. “Make me.”
I kiss him then, deep and claiming, the way I’ve learned he likes. His body arches against mine, a dance we’ve perfected. When I reach between us, I find him already slick with lube from earlier.
“Someone is still prepared,” I murmur against his neck.
“What can I say?” Theo sighs as I push inside him, the familiar heat enveloping me. “I knew you’d wake up wanting more.”
I thrust deeper, angling my hips to hit that spot that makes Theo’s back arch off the bed.
His cock, hard and flushed, bounces against his stomach with each movement.
Without breaking rhythm, I wrap my hand around his length, loving the contrast between his velvety soft skin and how rigid his dick gets for me
“Fuck, I love your cock,” I growl, surprising myself with the admission. Before the Hunt, I couldn’t have imagined saying those words to anyone.
Theo’s eyes flash with pleasure in the dim light. “Yeah? Show me how much.”
I tighten my grip, stroking him in time with my thrusts, mesmerized by the bead of pre-cum that forms at his tip. I swipe my thumb through it, spreading the wetness down his shaft. The groan that escapes him sends a shudder through my entire body.
“I think about it all the time,” I admit, my voice rough with desire. “Even at the gym. In meetings. Picturing how it feels in my hand. My mouth.”
Theo’s cock pulses in my palm at my words, growing even harder. I slow my pace inside him, focusing on the weight of him in my hand. I’ve become obsessed with making him fall apart this way, learning exactly how much pressure he likes, the slight twist at the head that makes his thighs tremble.
“You know what else I think about?” Theo pants, eyes locked on mine.
I know exactly what he’s suggesting. It’s been an unspoken thing between us—how I’ve explored every part of his body but still haven’t let him inside me that way. The thought sends equal parts terror and arousal through me.
“Not tonight,” I manage, increasing the speed of my strokes instead, watching his eyes roll back. “Let me just feel you like this.”
I lean down to capture his mouth, silencing whatever he might say next. My hand never stops working his cock, loving the power of bringing him pleasure this way.
Truth is, I’ve thought about it. A lot. How could I not?
For a smaller guy, Theo is fucking huge.
Thick and heavy in my hand, at least eight inches to my eleven.
Every time I stroke him, wrap my mouth around him, feel him pulse against my tongue, I wonder what it would feel like to take him inside me.
The thought makes my dick twitch and my balls ache with a deep, bone-level need I never knew I had before him.
I’ve watched how he comes apart when I’m inside him. The way his eyes roll back, how his whole body tenses then surrenders. The sounds he makes—half pain, half pleasure—when I stretch him open. I wonder if I’d make those same sounds for him.
It terrifies me. Not the pain—I’ve had worse. Not even what it might mean about who I am. That ship sailed months ago.
What scares me is how much I want it.
His cock throbs in my hand now as I pick up the pace of my thrusts. I can’t help imagining our positions reversed—his weight above me, his eyes locked on mine as he pushes inside, claiming me the way I’ve claimed him countless times.
The image is so vivid, so fucking hot that I have to fight to maintain control. My rhythm falters as heat pools low in my spine, threatening to push me over the edge too quickly.
“I know what you’re thinking about,” Theo whispers, his voice rough with need. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“Fuck, you’re missing out,” Theo pants, his eyes heavy-lidded but challenging as I continue to work my hand over his cock. “You have no idea what you’re denying yourself.”
I tighten my grip around his shaft, trying to shut him up, but Theo just smirks through his pleasure.
“Think about it,” he continues, his voice dropping to that low, hypnotic rhythm that always gets under my skin. “How good it feels when I come apart on your cock? That’s what you’d feel with me inside you.”
My rhythm falters for a second before I recover, driving deeper into him.
“You think about it,” he says, clenching around me deliberately. “I see it in your eyes when you watch me take you. When your fingers brush against my spot and feel how it pulses.”
“Shut up,” I growl, but my cock betrays me, throbbing inside him at his words.
Theo reaches up, fingers digging into my shoulders. “Your body wants it. Every time you fuck me, you wonder what it would be like to surrender.”
I try to silence him with a brutal kiss, but he turns his face at the last second, lips brushing my ear instead.
“I’d make it so good for you,” he whispers. “Stretch you open slow until you’re begging for more. Find that spot inside you that would make you see stars.”
His words paint vivid pictures in my mind—his cock breaching me, his hands holding me down, that first burn of stretch.
“I’d fuck you so deep,” Theo continues, his body writhing beneath me even as his words take control. “Watch your face when I hit your prostate for the first time. Make you come harder than you ever have.”
My hips jerk involuntarily at the image, my control slipping.
“You’d love it,” he says, squeezing around my cock again. “Being filled. Being taken. Being mine.”
His words drive me crazy. The thought of surrendering to Theo—letting him inside me—sends a surge of heat through my body that I can’t control. But instead of pulling back, I channel that energy into possessing him completely.
“Maybe someday,” I growl, voice barely recognizable to my own ears. “But tonight, you’re still taking all of me.”
I release his cock to grab his wrists, pinning them above his head with one hand while I hitch his leg higher with the other. The new angle lets me drive deeper, hitting that spot that makes him arch off the bed.
“Fuck, Victor—” he gasps, but I cut him off with a bruising kiss, my tongue claiming his mouth the way my cock claims his body.
I feel the familiar tightening at the base of my spine, pleasure coiling like a spring ready to snap. But I’m not done with him yet. I break the kiss, my lips brushing against his ear.
“Be a good boy and take Daddy’s cum,” I command, my voice rough with need. “Every. Fucking. Drop.”
Theo’s entire body tenses underneath me, his cock trapped between our stomachs, leaking pre-cum onto his skin. The way he looks at me—eyes blown wide with pleasure, lips parted—pushes me right to the edge.
“Fill me up,” he moans, clenching around me deliberately. “Please, Daddy.”
That’s all it takes. With a final, brutal thrust, I bury myself to the hilt and explode inside him, my release pulsing hot and wet. The sensation of breeding him—marking him from the inside—is so intense I almost black out.
“Fuck, that’s it,” I groan against his neck. “Taking Daddy’s load so good.”
Theo’s body arches beneath me, his cock jerking untouched between us. With a desperate cry, he comes, ropes of cum shooting across his chest, some landing as high as his collarbone. I feel each pulse of his orgasm squeezing around my still-throbbing cock.